After a holiday hiatus here on RobotNext, the posts return with this one on a robotic fish from recycled materials. You can see the video at Inhabitat.com or click on the embedded link below for a small version. The idea is to teach children about the movements of swimming fish. I think this also teaches a valuable lesson on recycling materials before they end up in the ocean. See the link below for the entire story and other videos.

A group of Korean scientists, led by Dr. Ryuh Young-sun, have developed a robotic fish. The team, located at the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, debuted the fishbot in an aquarium at BEXCO. The researchers teleoperated the robotic fish. Named "Ichthys," the Greek word for fish, the robot can swim for four hours on one charge of its power supply. It is able to go to depths of 100 meters. Furthermore, the robofish has an onboard GPS device which allows it to find locations for recharging its batteries. It seems as if robotic fish are being developed everywhere. RobotNext had an earlier story on the MIT robot fish. It is beginning to look like fishbots are as popular as snakebots. Check out the links to the original story below.

Robotic fish that swim like a bass or trout are the latest crossover from biology to robotics. Mechanical engineers Kamal Youcef-Toumi and Pablo Valdivia Y Alvarado of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have designed the elegant fishbots to maneuver deftly into areas where more conventional underwater remotely operated or autonomous vehicles are unable to reach. “Schools” of the new robot fish could be utilized to carry-out inspections of underwater structures such as oil and gas pipes; ship’s hulls; and perhaps help detect environmental hazards. They could also find uses in patrolling ports, rivers, and lakes. Unlike earlier robotic fish, these robots are much simpler in design and are much more like their natural models. Read more about these amazing machines in the stories linked below.

Here is the next robot model from nature—a fish. Here at RobotNext, there have been reports of many types of robots based on nature. Now, robot fish may be able to demonstrate that the motions of a swimming fish could be used to move ships through the ocean. If this could be done, it is possible that a eco-friendly propulsion method could be developed for vessels sailing the oceans. Researchers hope to demonstrate that the swimming robot can provide a way to prevent damage to shorelines and the seabed. Read more about this development in the article at Science Daily as reported by WWW.OLOSCIENCE.COM at the links below.

ScienceDaily (June 11, 2009) — The team of Darmstadt researchers analyzed videos of fish’s motions and then developed a prototype fish robot that duplicated them, and are now testing it using the locomotional patterns of various species of fish in order to refine it and improve its efficiency.